


hold onto me ('cause i'm a little unsteady)

by badskeletonpuns



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, M/M, Not really a fix-it fic, breaking into someone's house for FRIENDSHIP, but at least there's communication, everything is still sad, just post episode 69, platonic samben tbh, spoilers for episode 68: The Best Imitation of Myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-17
Updated: 2018-02-17
Packaged: 2019-03-20 11:38:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13716900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badskeletonpuns/pseuds/badskeletonpuns
Summary: I just caught up on King Falls AM, and felt that immediately after episode 69 there needed to be fanfiction of Sammy and Ben's next conversation. It's angsty, folks. This ain't fixing anything.





	hold onto me ('cause i'm a little unsteady)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Feuer_Fight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feuer_Fight/gifts).



Sammy had been packed for months.    


His lease was up in May, a few days after his contract would have run out. 

He hadn’t been planning on being around for those last days anyway. What did it matter if he ran off even earlier? 

He sat in his living room after that  _ fucking _ show, bent over on his couch with his head in his hands. He’d tried turning the radio on, god knows why, but apparently Ben was trying to get through a best of tape and Sammy had turned it off the moment he’d heard his own voice. 

Almost three years ago. 

God, he’d been such an idiot. Still was. 

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the moon had dipped below the horizon at some point on the drive home. Nothing but starlight and half-hearted street lamps lit Sammy’s living room, leaving him stumbling in the monochrome and shadows that made up his apartment. 

He’d pulled his bags into the main room, staring at them. 

He should just leave.    


Ben was so goddamn magnetic and Sammy had already almost given in. Ben had been fucking begging him to stay and to keep trying, and Sammy had said no one could say no to him. That fire, that determination, everything that Sammy didn’t have. 

Someone knocked. 

Sammy didn’t answer. 

They knocked again. 

He let himself fall back against the couch, soft material bending to accommodate him. 

“Sammy, open the fucking door or I’m coming in through the window! You know me, you know I’m not joking!” Ben shouted. 

Sammy closed his eyes. Fuck if he cared, he was leaving anyway. 

“You are my best friend and I love you and I will break your fucking window!” Ben pounded on the door. 

If he let Ben in, there was no way he was leaving any time soon. But there was no way Ben could stop him leaving for forever, and dragging it out would just hurt everyone more. Ben wasn’t actually going to break the window, he was going to leave, Sammy was going to leave, and Ben would get over it—

A crash sounded and glass shattered into the air, a thousand tiny glimmers in the starlight, and a rock landed perilously close to Sammy’s coffee table. He jolted up off the couch, standing so quickly that he almost fell over. 

Ben reached into his apartment, groping around with one arm until he found the window latch to open it so he could climb in without being cut by the glass. “I wasn’t kidding, man,” he said, making his way through the frame. 

Once he was fully inside, he stood still. Glass surrounded his feet, catching the barest hints of light from outside. “Sammy,” he said, and Sammy couldn’t quite see his face but he knew Ben was looking right at him. “Please don’t leave.” 

“Ben,” Sammy whispered, and his voice cracked on Ben’s name and he knew he sounded so goddamn weak. “I can’t keep doing this.” 

Ben shook his head, the movement barely visible. He made his way forward, stumbling over the rock he’d thrown and Sammy’s luggage. At the suitcases, he looked up, and a streetlight caught his face in a moment of  _ despair _ , something horrible and empty and Sammy hadn’t seen that expression on Ben’s face since he’d played him the Debbie tape when she said Emily shouldn’t come home, and then Ben was tripping over his coffee table and wrapping his arms around Sammy. 

“Sammy, Sammy, please,” Ben got out, like he couldn’t say anything. Ben Arnold, so eloquent, so determined, so crying in his best friend’s arms, and there was a single fucking second in which Sammy knew that no matter how much he had loved Jack there was nothing he would change if it meant he’d never meet Ben. 

“Shhh, shhhh,” he murmured, and he was crying too, but it didn’t matter. He sat back down on the couch, pulling Ben down with him. Ben’s face was wet where it pressed into his neck, his hands clutching Sammy’s shirt tight. 

Ben almost laughed a little, the sound choked-up and ugly. “Jack-in-the-Box Jesus. I shouldn’t—I should be the one comforting  _ you _ right now.” 

He sat back, just far enough to look Sammy in the eyes. 

In this low light, Sammy could barely out Ben’s face. He didn’t look anything like Jack, never had, but right now… He almost did.

Sammy flashed back to years ago, to nights spent on the couch and looking into a face just this determined, just this afraid. Watching someone he loved fall apart. 

“Ben, it’s—” he started. 

Ben shook his head and sniffled, taking a deep breath. “No, wait, Sammy. Please. Let me talk.” 

It was cold in Sammy’s living room, colder still without Ben pressed against him. Sammy nodded at Ben and did not pull him close again. 

“Look,” Ben said. He breathed in again, long and slow. “You can lie to yourself, but don’t lie to me. Do you want to leave?” 

The question hung in the air for centuries that passed in seconds, hanging like dust motes in the gentle beams of light coming in through the window. 

Sammy just shook his head.    


He couldn’t say anything. He couldn’t. 

There were tear tracks on Ben’s face and fresh tears alike, and they gleamed in the morning light. It was getting grayer ever so slightly as the morning marched on, allowing Sammy to make out even more of the fucking heartbreak on Ben’s face. 

He had to say something now. He still couldn’t, but he  _ had  _ to. 

“Ben,” he whispered. “You’re,  _ fuck _ , you’re all I’ve got. I don’t want to leave you here, I just can’t stay in this goddamn town.” Sammy couldn’t help it, he slumped forward into Ben’s arms, resting his forehead on Ben’s shoulders. “I can’t,” he breathed. 

He felt rather than saw Ben shake his head, felt him tug Sammy closer. “It’s okay, it’s okay, Sammy. We’ll get through this, I promise. I’ll come with you.” 

Sammy jerked back, shaking his head violently. “No, Ben, you can’t! Ben, you have a fucking  _ life _ here, you’ve got Emily and your mom, there’s—Ben, there’s so much here for you.” 

“Yeah,” Ben said. “Yeah!” he said again, louder. He put his hands on Sammy’s shoulders, holding him still while he looked into his eyes. “Sammy, guess what. You’ve got a life here too. You don’t—You don’t have to keep looking for Jack if you don’t want to, you don’t have to talk about your past, and  _ you don’t have to fucking leave. _ There are—” his voice cracked, new tears spilling over onto his cheek, “—people who love you here, and goddamnit I am one of them.” 

“Ben, you’ll—”

“ _ Don’t you goddamn tell me I’ll get over it. _ Sammy, I swear to the fucking aliens themselves I will never get over you if you leave like this.” 

Sammy couldn’t help but laugh a little. It sounded more like sobbing, even to him. “The aliens. Okay.” 

“Just. At least stay till May? Give me some more time. Please, man.” 

And.

And Sammy had said no one could say no to Ben, hadn’t he? 

He’d said that with Ben staring at him in the studio, love and pain and confusion in those big dark eyes, he’d said it to himself in the darkness of his living room, and he was thinking it here with tears on Ben’s face and Ben’s hands on Sammy’s shoulders, and there was no way Sammy would have left once Ben broke into his house at five am. 

The sky was turning pink at the edges of the horizon, and Sammy was falling hard and fast, and he was nodding. 

“I’ll stay,” he promised. “Until May, at least.” 

He shouldn’t have said that. 

But what else could he have done? 

**Author's Note:**

> I'M BACK Y'ALL. I WAS SEDUCED AWAY BY OTHER PODCASTS FOR A WHILE, BUT I'M BACK TO WRITE THAT SAMBEN ANGST AND SAMBENILY FLUFF.  
> anyway. pls come scream with me about episodes 68&69\. also this was from prompts by feuer-fight so thnx for that my dude.


End file.
